Editor's Column

Id like to clarify the purpose of the Editors Column. The articles
that comprise "Editors Column" do not seek to represent Suns
view, and I dont know about OpenOffice.orgs views, as its
not clear that one can easily synthesize the disparate views of an open-source
community as such into something coherent enough to fit into a column. Rather,
the purpose of the column is to focus on issues that the community has found
interesting, as evidenced by discussions in the mailing lists, or might find
interesting, because they relate to Open Source, its communities, and important
spokespeople.

All this is to say that the articles I write under the rubric, "Editors
Column" are meant to be discussed. So, if you disagree with the ideas,
logic, or characterizations, please, feel free express your opinions. And, if
you feel that I am not addressing some pressing issue, dont hesitate to
let me know. As Ive stated before, I would be delighted to receive suggestions
about topics, interviews, what have you. In fact, this is a serious call for
ideas: Send in your suggestions either to the discuss list or to louis
at collab.net. It would also be great if a community member were to submit
for consideration an article, interview, or piece that he or she felt others
in the community would find interesting.

Questions about Open Source

This article inaugurates a series of articles questioning the shape and force
of Open Source, as a culture of work and as an organizational system. I plan
on these articles being intermittent; the sequence will doubtless be interrupted
by more immediate news or controversy related to OpenOffice.org.

There are several questions that motivate this inquiry; they include:

How are (other) large open-source projects organized?

What are the issues at stake? (I.e., what is hoped to be accomplished by
open-sourcing the code?)

Under what license or licenses are these constituted?

What is the relation between the sponsoring corporation and the open-source
project?

Who are the developers, and what do they have to gain from the project?

And, finallyand most intangiblywhat is the "culture"
of the project?

Clearly, this project is large in scope and will take some time to fully complete;
in fact, Im sure Ill have to revisit the Darwin project later on.
My plan so far is to examine not just Darwin, but also Mozilla.org, and other
large, open-source projects. Why large projects? Size is a criterion here simply
because I suspect a large open-source project differs importantly from smaller
projects, and not just in the logistics of arranging the release of enormous
blocks of code to an uncertainly defined community. The nature of the community,
its "culture," how it works together, and the manner in which it contributes
code also changes according to the size and scope of the project.

This project is evolving. If the community wants to contribute suggestionssuch
as different questions to ask, or particular projects that should be examinedplease
forward them to me, and Ill see what I can do.

Darwin

Apple Computers open-source Darwin was announced
on 16 March 1999, and, in the words of its statement to the press, Apple became
"the first mainstream operating system provider to release its source code
to the public and base its system software strategy on Open Source technologies."
Initially, the focus was on Mac OS X Server; it quickly included the consumer-oriented
Mac OS X, which is slated for release on 24 March 2001.

Darwin 1.2, the current
release, is enormous. 135MB for a disk image of the binaries. Interested
developers can also download source code; the project allows modifications to
be submitted
through mailing lists and CVS (Concurrent Versions System), which is recommended
but not required.

Despite its size and ambition, however, Darwin as an open-source project
seems to be often ignored by other open-source groups. OpenOffice.org, for instance,
is usually compared to Mozilla.org, and
is touted as being the largest open-source project. Darwin is never (or very
seldom) mentionednot by Sun press, nor by the media at large, when discussing
OpenOffice.org

This lack of mention probably has something to do with the common notion that
Apple exists in a universe of its own. But it also has to do, I think, with
the controversy surrounding Apples open source credentials. Shortly after
the announcement of the projects inception, however, the license under
which Darwin project operated and which defined the projects status as
"open source," became the focus of a debate between Open Source luminaries
Eric Raymond, of OpenSource.org,Bruce Perens,who gave us "Open
Source," and Richard Stallman, who
can be said to have started Open
Source (or, as he prefers, "Free Software").

To summarize the history, Eric Raymond gave, if not his blessing, his certification,
to the Apple Public Source License under which Darwin was constituted (APSL
Ver. 1 and shortly later, 1.1;
it is now at Ver. 1.2).
Raymond was publicly criticized for his actions by his colleague Bruce Perens,
who along with Wichert Akkerman,
Debian Project Leader, and Ian
Jackson, President, Software in the Public
Interest, argued that the
APSL Ver. 1 failed to meet the necessary criteria for Open Source (Version 1.1,
issued 19 April 1999, mostly satisfied
the authors). Richard Stallman was unpersuaded by the changes Apple made to
its license and condemned
it as roundly as he had the first version (Ver. 1.1 fell "short of being
a free software license"). The debate got a little
savage, but that is because the issue at stake was so important to Open
Source.

The issue had to do with the relation between corporate interests and Open
Source. As Perens rather despondently concludes in his rebuttal
to Raymond, "The needs of corporations are not necessarily those of the
free software community, and it may even be the case that the twain will never
meet. Open Source appears to be splitting into something I'd call "Corporate
Source", semi-free programs with disclosed source but less than the full set
of rights we are used to, and true Free Software as represented by the GPL,
LGPL, X/BSD, and other licenses. Public discussion of this fact is essential.
We may eventually have to accept that it will never be possible for corporate
participation in the free software community to be as full as we would like.
Contributions like the MacOS X source may end up being useless to the free software
community as far as code reuse is concerned, but they may still be good documentation
on the underlying hardware, and will be useful, with some caution, to authors
of fully free software."

Perens wrote gloomier than warranted. Not only has OpenOffice.org evidenced
that a company can move large, proprietary, software using true Open Source
licenses, but Apple itself
has recently (4 January 2001) revised its license
for Darwin. The short blurb
under the link for the new license states, "The Apple Public Source License
has been updated to make it easier for people to contribute to and use the software,"
and after the most cursory glance, it seems to be so. Rather belatedly, Apple
has entered Open Source (even Slashdot
seems to agree).

What is left hanging, however, is the question of the culture of Darwin. Future
articles will examine this aspect of the project. I will also begin a look at
Mozilla.org.

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